


Tempus Fugit

by Kasuchi



Category: Psych
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Partnership, Police
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-05
Updated: 2010-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:58:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasuchi/pseuds/Kasuchi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>O'Hara can't look at clocks for a month.</i> Between March and July, Lassiter watches his partner change, recover, and move forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tempus Fugit

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _Mr. Yin Presents_. No spoilers for Season 5, but takes place between the S4 finale and the S5 premiere.

O'Hara can't look at clocks for a month.

Lassiter sees her flinch when she looks up at the clock in the squadroom, the one that every other cop in the place seems to miss for some reason. She's taken the requisite sick days and has the department mandated therapy sessions, but Lassiter knows what PTSD looks like.

So, yes, he's worried, but she's also his fucking partner. That _means_ something.

**& &&**

He starts leaving his watch in his desk at the office. It's a nice watch, but every time his sleeves ride up and the hands on the face appear, especially when he's driving, it makes her stiffen slightly, makes her voice catch for a split second. Most people don't notice, but he's the head detective of the Santa Barbara police department. He notices.

So he starts leaving his watch in the desk drawer and using his cell to keep time. He notices that O'Hara doesn't mind digital displays. It's the analog ones that have her on edge.

He winces internally at the poor choice of words. _Good going, Carlton,_ he tells himself and keys the ignition with more force than he really needs. She slides into the passenger seat and buckles up silently.

Suddenly, he misses her.

**& &&**

She stops wearing bright colors. She would pair pink shirts with her navy suit, robin's egg blue under charcoal grey, and even lilacs under ebony black blazers.

Once, when she had come in wearing the pink-under-blue number, makeup minimal though her mouth had the slight sheen of lip gloss, he had raised an eyebrow at her. She had caught the glance and grinned.

"I'm a spring," she offered by way of explanation, bracing one fist on her hip.

"Really." He gave her a once over. "And me?"

"Winter. Definitely a winter," she'd teased, laughter in the background of her voice and in her eyes.

Now, her clothes take on a monochromatic lull. Black suits, white shirts, not even a pin on the lapel. Not even a slight shine or sparkle - her makeup is minimal and matte, fingernails trimmed to the quick and unpolished.

It was all small changes. She didn't smile as often anymore, it seemed. He starts counting the number of times she smiles each day. He brings her a blueberry muffin one morning and it elicits the biggest, warmest smile from her that he's seen in weeks. It stuns him and he gruffly mutters that he was at the coffeeshop and thought she'd like it, embarrassed to be caught staring.

Spencer comes by and is his usual self, over the top and loud. Lassiter watches him with O'Hara carefully. Usually she at least greets him warmly and hears him out. Spencer rambles on when suddenly she holds up a hand, says something and just walks away.

Spencer just looks lost.

Lassiter walks up to him and claps a hand on his shoulder. He opens his mouth to say something but just shuts it closed again, offers a reassuring squeeze, and walks away.

**& &&**

They get assigned an open-shut burglary case. Shut because the perp is dumb enough to stick around the scene after knocking out the store owner.

'Course, he makes a break for it when Lassiter kicks in the door. He and O'Hara give chase, splitting up when the culprit takes off down an alley.

She gets to him first and he witnesses her take the guy down, no gentleness in her strikes. He jogs up to them in time to hear her click the handcuffs on too tight. The guy is sobbing on the ground, fingertips purpling.

They drag the blubbering crook back to the squad car, O'Hara muttering darkly at the perp who seems to blanch and flush intermittently. She slams him against the trunk of the outfitted sedan while he unlocks the back. The perp cries out and shouts, "Police brutality!"

Lassiter rolls his eyes but O'Hara narrows hers and grins nastily. "You think that was police brutality? I haven't even started, scum." She jerks the whimpering theif and stuffs him into the back of the car.

The ride back to the station is filled with a tense silence. O'Hara stares blankly out the window, the perp fixes his gaze resolutely at the carpet, and Lassiter's eyes flick between the road and his partner next to him.

When they get back to the station, he unceremoniously hands their cuffed crook over to McNabb. "Book him, McNabb. O'Hara, you're with me," he adds, voice like steel. He pulls her by the elbow, striding toward an unoccupied interview room. He kicks the door shut behind them. O'Hara has her arms cross folded across her chest, standing in front of the window, expression expectant.

He opts for the direct route. "What the _hell_ was that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know damn well what I'm talking about. We'll be lucky if his lawyer doesn't throw this case out due to police misconduct. And for what? So you could work off some steam."

" _Protect_ and serve, Lassiter. I was making sure he never came in here again."

"Protect and _serve_ means we work for the greater good. How is scaring the shit out of him helping the public? I thought you were smarter than that." He scoffs. "What's next? You gonna put on tights and a cape and beat up muggers in your off-hours?"

"Don't patronize me!" She shouts, hands uncrossing and balling into fists at her sides. "I'm so sick of you treating me with kid gloves. I don't owe you an explanation, and I sure as hell am not going to give you one."

"Wrong, O'Hara," he replies calmly, folding his arms. "I'm your partner. Whlie you don't _owe_ me an explanation, I certainly _deserve_ one. So, what the _hell_ were you thinking?"

She turns around, staring out the window for a long moment. He watches her intently, eyes tracing the lines of her shoulders, reading the tension in her posture, the defensive nature of her stance. _I've done this too long,_ he thinks, and resists the urge to sigh.

"I wasn't," she says finally.

He remains silent.

"I wasn't thinking," she repeats, shoulders slumping. "I've just been so _angry_ and I don't know why. I jump at shadows and I can't take being more than three feet off the ground and _clocks_ drive me _crazy_ and I don't know what to do or why this is happening to me." She turns around, expression heartbreaking.

He moves and hugs her unprompted, and she clings to him, shoulders shaking but not crying, and it's a lot like it was all those weeks ago. (Two steps forward, three steps back.)

He wishes she didn't have to be this strong and immediately hates himself for it.

**& &&**

She starts wearing colors again, all of them dark. Midnight blues and dusky purples and reds the color of fine wine. It's still not her back to normal, but it's a step in the right direction.

She will slip out in the afternoons and disappear for two hours and return, sometimes with eyes swollen and puffy, sometimes sunnier than she's been in what feels like months, sometimes just a little bit less tense than when she left. He doesn't ask, doesn't comment; he remembers the year of marriage counseling, the months of sessions after he killed a man and watched his partner get gunned down within weeks of each other. So, instead, he treats her like she went to lunch, and sometimes he can tell that she is grateful.

After a day off, she comes in and her hair is its natural medium brown, highlights erased.

"You changed your hair," he offers awkwardly, never really good at this part.

She fingers a brown lock nervously. "Yeah. I didn't feel like doing the highlights again." She offers him a half smile.

He hears the unasked question. "It looks nice."

She beams.

**& &&**

Spencer comes in, a mocha latte in hand as a peace offering. She greets him warmly, considerably more so than the last time he had wandered through, and he cracks jokes and does his usual antics. O'Hara is still more subdued than she used to be, and Lassiter notices that she doesn't give Spencer the opportunity to touch her, but she smiles and nods and looks _alive_.

Later, after Spencer has left and they are both trying to tackle the mess of paperwork that always follows an arrest and the closing of a case, he decides to ask.

"Are you and Spencer...okay?"

She looks up from her form, brow furrowed. "Yeah, why?"

He shifts in his chair, tossing the pen onto his desk, and raises an eyebrow. "O'Hara, I'm the head detective of the Santa Barbara Police Department. Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to take you into interview room five and do it the hard way?"

She sighs and fiddles with her pen. Her chair squeaks as she leans back in it. "It's complicated."

He scoffs. "Samurai sudoku is complicated. Your relationship with Spencer is not."

She winces. "Well, if we're going to do this, I want quid pro quo."

He takes stock of the situation. "Fine."

She flashes him a triumphant smile before her expression turns thoughtful. "We're okay, I guess." She pauses and he remaines silent. "My therapist--" She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. His expression doesn't shift. "She and I have been talking about this, too." She swallows and stares at the ceiling. "I think I blame him."

"For the...?"

"Yeah." She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "I mean, you and Gus and Shawn and his dad were just as much targets as I was. But..." She trails off and bites her lip.

"But only you and Abigail ended up tied up," he finishes.

"Exactly. It's hard to ignore that fact." She stares into her lap at her clasped hands.

"Can I offer some advice?"

She nods.

"First, you said it yourself - Yin was was targeting Spencer as much as any of us, and we were all caught up in it. He gave all of us a part to play, and none of us realized it until it was too late and we'd already played right into his hands. Even Spencer."

She nods slowly.

"Second, this bastard is a serial killer. I'm reasonably sure that makes his opinion irrelevant."

She flashes him a ghost of a smile.

"Third," he says, standing and moving to perch on the edge of her desk. "Third, you _survived_. Yin didn't win, you're alive, and believe me when I say that no one is happier about that than Spencer." He pauses and looks away. "Except maybe me."

Silence fills the air. After a moment, he fells something settle over his hand. He looks up and sees her looking at him with too-bright eyes, hand covering his. "You realize we're never speaking of this again." She laughs and he allows himself a crooked grin. "So what did you want to ask me?"

She shakes her head and waves a hand in the air. "Rain check."

He nods. "Okay." He walks back to his desk and picks up his pen, moving to resume the neverending task of completing his paperwork.

"Carlton?"

His eyes snap up to her.

"Thank you."

He feels himself start to blush and waves it off. "I'm your partner, O'Hara."

"Right," she says softly, but (and this he notes with a measure of satisfaction) she has a small smile on her face the rest of their shift.

**& &&**

They are on a stakeout when she suddenly says, "You haven't mentioned your wife in a while."

He puts down the binoculars and raises an eyebrow at her. She shrugs. "I'm cashing in my rain check. Why haven't you mentioned your wife in a long time?"

He fiddles with the binoculars for a long moment. "We've been divorced for almost a year and a half."

She says nothing.

"Last I heard, she was moving to Seattle." He shrugs. "I didn't make her happy, and I've come to terms with that. I'm moving on."

O'Hara nods. Then her expression turns mischievous. "Were you really dating your previous partner?"

He glares at her. She blinks back innocently.

"Yes," he mutters. "Until Spencer called us out. She transferred to Palo Alto or San Francisco, I think."

"How did that happen?"

"We were both lonely," he replies after a long time. "I'd been separated for over a year, and she was...she had her own things to deal with and, well, it was easy." He shakes his head. "It was a mistake."

She nods. "I saw it eat a partnership from the inside out in Miami." She quirked a smile at him. "Too bad it's not like it is on TV, huh? Mulder and Scully were the lucky ones."

There comes a great crashing sound and they're both out of the car in a flash, guns drawn.

**& &&**

They are working late one night, combing through bank statements and financial records and cartons of Chinese food when she reaches into her desk and sets down a box in front of him. "Happy half birthday," she says without preamble and sits back down.

"O'Hara, you know I don't--"

"We both know you're going to open it," she says, cutting him off. "Let's skip the dance tonight, okay?"

He grumbles but lifts the lid off of the box. It's a watch, silver with a gold-and-silver metal bracelet. More importantly, it has an analog face. He looks at her, confused.

"You haven't worn your watch in weeks," she explains, smiling slightly. "I'm the partner of the SBPD head detective. Did you think I wouldn't notice?"

He looks from her to the analog face and then back to her. She misinterpreted his look, but...

He licks his lips, mouth suddenly dry. "I...I..." He swallowed and tried again. "Thank you, Juliet."

"You're welcome." She grins at him. "You going to eat that egg roll?"

**& &&**

They get a call that takes them to the base of the clock tower. When they get out of the car, he blocks her way.

"You going to be okay?"

She nods. "Yes, I'll be fine."

She moves to step past him and he puts himself in her way again. He peers at her over his sunglasses, eyes searching her face. She shifts her weight and raises an eyebrow at him.

He notes that she's done her makeup more than she has in the last month, and while her shirt isn't bright pink, it _is_ a jewel tone.

"Fine," he says at last. "But if--"

"I know," she says, cutting him off. She rests a hand on his upper arm. "And you'll be the first to know."

He nods and they walk over to the scene. He lifts the yellow crime scene tape for her and she dips her head in thanks before ducking under and crouching by the body. He follows and stands behind her.

"Vic's name was Walter Torv," he reads, flipping through a file that a uniformed officer passed him. "Witnesses say he jumped."

Her hands shake slightly as she searches the body carefully. "My money says he was pushed," she pipes from her position. If her voice shakes a little bit, he chooses to ignore it.

"Why?"

She points to the victim's face. "He's wearing his glasses. Most suicides I've seen, the glasses are in a pocket."

He nods and offers her a hand up. "Let's get witness statements."

**& &&**

She has good days and bad days.

She still isn't wearing the hot pinks, the robin's egg blues, the lilacs, but she isn't just wearing black and white anymore, either. He brings in muffins and coffee for her from time to time and she lights up so brightly that it's almost like she hasn't changed at all. He hasn't stopped counting the number of times she smiles each day, but she no longer has single-digit weeks. She and Spencer hug one afternoon, and he looks away.

She isn't back to how she used to be, but Juliet O'Hara is a lot stronger than she looks, and Carlton Lassiter is grateful for this fact more and more each day.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This is supposed to be a partnership / friendshippy type of fic. I think one of the best parts of the show is how the O'Hara-Lassiter dynamic has shifted over time. They started almost adversarial, and now they high-five each other from time to time, and she supports him completely, even if it means ignoring jurisdiction lines.
> 
> 2\. Lassiter's personal effects do, in fact, include an analog-face watch on a metal bracelet strap. ([See here](http://twitpic.com/1zlr0t), as posted by one of the show's writers.) Also, assuming the math adds up, Lassiter had been separated from his wife in the Pilot for a year and a half. (He says in the Pilot that he'd been separated for 5 months, and then in 1.10, he says that while everyone thinks it's been 9 months, it's really been 2 years.)
> 
> 3\. I'll be totally honest - this is minimally beta'd, and I honestly don't know my _Psych_ canon as well as some of my other shows. So any mistakes are totally my own fault, though I did go back and double-check a few things, including Lassiter's separation timeline and a skim for tense issues, of which I have many.
> 
> 4\. Title is Latin for "time flees." It's a double reference, to both the time for recovery as well as the fact that Juliet was tied to a clock, dangling to her death. In that kind of instance, every minute is surely an eternity. ( _Tempus Fugit_ also the name of a [Batman villain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_King#Batman:_The_Animated_Series), slightly stylized to Tempus Fugate. The More You Know.)
> 
> 5\. This fic is dedicated to Lauren. I'm pretty sure this fic is her fault somehow. I'm not really sure how, but we're just going to go with it. Thanks for being my plot bunny rancher, darlin'. ♥
> 
> 6\. Wordcount: 2,703

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tempora Mutantur](https://archiveofourown.org/works/686871) by [Kasuchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasuchi/pseuds/Kasuchi)




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